This note provides guidance for cities in developing countries for managing the urban water cycle in a sustainable manner by using an Integrated Urban Water Management (IUWM) approach. After a brief introduction to the concept of IUWM, this note profiles the different IUWM approaches applied in three types of cities: a water-scarce, fast-developing city (Windhoek, Namibia), an expanding city subject to climate extremes (Melbourne, Australia) and a dense flood-prone city (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). It also profiles an example of World Bank engagement under an IUWM approach in a fast-growing city in a middle-income country (Vitoria in Espírito Santo, Brazil). The final section showcases a potential methodology for applying an IUWM approach in a city, from the initial engagement and diagnostic phases towards the application of a full IUWM umbrella framework under which a program can be implemented.
This note explores the Bangladesh experience in implementing the widespread use of a private operator model for building and operating rural piped water schemes. Since the early 1990s, the World Bank has, through a series of development projects, designed, piloted, and attempted to scale up use of the model as a mechanisms to address the very real issues of arsenic contamination and delivery at scale. The latest of these projects is still in implementation. The experience with these projects to date has been disappointing, and while a limited number of schemes are still in operation, the model has not been replicated in a large number of communities as intended and has not proved to be particularly sustainable. Over this same period, the government and other development partners also have been using alternative methods to deliver the same kinds of services in rural areas. Some of these efforts seem to have been modestly successful. However, much of the evidence about the performance of these other models is anecdotal and there has been little rigorous analysis to compare the performance of these different models with the private sponsor approach. This paper attempts to do this on the basis of a desk review of existing World Bank literature, including project documents and research reports, coupled with interviews with key stakeholders and World Bank staff. The first section of the paper provides an overview of the rationale and key issues associated with efforts to scale up a private operator model in Bangladesh. The second section reviews government efforts and those of its other development partners, to use a more traditional mode of service provision, involving community management. The third, fourth, and fifth sections review efforts by the government and the World Bank to design, test, and scale up a private operator model for service provision. A sixth section reviews some of the international research that provides insights into the use of such models in other countries and sectors. The paper ends with tentative conclusions about the experience in Bangladesh, lessons learned, and several options for further analysis.
This is a book about directorship. More precisely, it's about nominee directors, who are nominated by IFC and other development finance institutions (DFIs) to the boards of investee companies to fulfill a dual mandate: first, they are expected to perform all the duties and tasks of a board member. Second, they are also charged with improving the corporate governance, sustainability, and ethical behavior of the investee company. This need exists because the empirical evidence indicates that in many developing countries it is nearly impossible to create long-term shareholder value without marked improvements in these areas. This book, based on sound research and real-life examples, offers not only a useful learning platform but also, the authors hope, an entertaining read. It focuses on directorship and leadership skills in the boardroom and does not attempt to cover the whole 'waterfront' on corporate governance issues. Many other publications (including some found on the IFC website) deal extensively with the structures, processes, and legal frameworks of corporate governance. The story emphasizes the learning and adapting that must go on for a nominee director to be effective in encouraging change and improvement on the board and in the company. It draws on specific situations to illustrate that IFC rules and instructions cannot always be perfectly followed: the nominee director is in the 'heat of the battle,' under time pressure, and confronted with dilemmas and uncertainty that only in hindsight can be structured and analyzed clearly. The target audience of the incredible adventures of Carla is nominee directors, especially those who are newly appointed or candidates who are considering taking on such a role. It aims to expose them to the challenges in the behavioral dimension of corporate governance and to help them learn, through Carla's experience, the actions and communications that can help them, or not help them, achieve the goals they are committed to.
Mozambique has enjoyed strong economic growth but poverty levels are still unacceptably high. Mozambique is now in a transition period with an opportunity to plan for how resource revenues can contribute to poverty reduction and inclusive growth. Any policy to scale-up a cash transfer program will operate with a limited budget, meaning that decisions will need to be made on the optimal design choice in Mozambique. The objective of this policy note is to generate debate on implementing a scaled-up cash transfer in Mozambique's future resource-rich environment, as part of a broader strategy to reduce poverty. The scope of this note is focused on distributing resource revenues through a scaled-up cash transfer program, and not the broader management of resource revenues. Section one discusses growth and poverty dynamics. Section two presents the existing social protection system. Section three discusses policy options for implementing a scaled-up cash transfer program using a simulation exercise to estimate poverty and welfare effects for a given fiscal envelope. Section four discusses how to address the risks of financing a scaled-up cash transfer program from resource revenues. Section five focuses on the practicalities of how the social protection system should be strengthened to implement scaled-up cash transfer program and the final section concludes.
The overview over the next pages summarizes key themes and findings from on-going technical assistance provided to the Kenyan water sector by the Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) of the World Bank's Water Global Practice. Kenya's new Constitution (Constitution of Kenya 2010) came into effect in 2013, declaring water supply and sanitation services a basic right and devolving key water and sanitation functions to the county level. Key legislation, including the County Government Act of 2012 and the Urban Areas and Cities Act of 2011, have provided the framework for far reaching changes. As these changes took shape before and after the new constitution came into effect, WSP's TA programs have been providing specific advice at the national level1 to align the sector's legal and institutional frameworks to the new decentralized constitution. The engagement and support to counties to adopt the new frameworks has been stepped up substantially since mid-2013. This is evidenced by the progress of the transition process under the Transition Authority and Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution. This note seeks to briefly highlight priorities and practical suggestions to pursue those priorities in order to support counties as they navigate the process of devolution.
Skills development is one of the priorities for national economic development strategies of Bangladesh. The vision 2021 of the Government of Bangladesh gives the highest priority to building a large base of skilled workers in order to achieve a poverty-free middle-income country by 2021. The skills development sector is highly complex due to multiple service providers, a vast spectrum of target audiences, a large range in modalities of service provision, and varied emphases in terms of skills levels and types. The short-term training, a formal channel of six months training, is an important instrument for bridging the gap between the needs of the labor market for increasing the pool of skillful workers and the aspiration of the students for finding a good job. In order to assess the performance of short-term training and interventions by Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP), a tracer study was conducted between December 2013 and January 2014. Skills and Training Enhancement Project (STEP) is jointly financed by the World Bank, Canada and the Government of Bangladesh (GoB), which started in 2010 for contributing to Bangladesh's medium to long-term objective of developing its human resources as a cornerstone of its strategy for poverty alleviation and economic growth. It supports competitively selected 42 public and 8 private short-term training institutions for improving the quality of training and providing opportunities to the disadvantaged youth for obtaining skills from the select training providers.
A synchronous growth slowdown has been underway in emerging markets (EM) since 2010. Growth in these countries is now markedly slower than, not just the pre‐crisis average, but also the long‐term average. As a group, EM growth eased from 7.6 percent in 2010 to 4.5 percent in 2014, and is projected to slow further to below 4 percent in 2015. This moderation has affected all regions (except South Asia) and is the most severe in Latin America and the Caribbean. The deceleration is highly synchronous across countries, especially among large EM. By 2015, China, Russia, and South Africa had all experienced three consecutive years of slower growth. The EM‐AE growth differential has narrowed to two percentage points in 2015, well below the 2003‐08 average of 4.8 percentage points and near the long‐term average differential of 1990‐2008. The recent slowdown in EM has been a source of a lively debate, as evident from the quotations at the beginning of this note. Some economists paint a bleak picture for the future of EM and argue that the impressive growth performance of EM prior to the crisis was driven by temporary commodity booms and rapid debt accumulation, and will not be sustained. Others emphasize that a wide range of cyclical and structural factors are driving the slowdown: weakening macroeconomic fundamentals after the crisis; prospective tightening in financial conditions; resurfacing of deep‐rooted governance problems in EM; and difficulty adjusting to disruptive technological changes. Still others highlight differences across EM and claim that some of them are in a better position to weather the slowdown and will likely register strong growth in the future. This policy research note seeks to help move the debate forward by examining the main features, drivers, and implications of the recent EM slowdown and provides a comprehensive analysis of available policy options to counteract it.
The Republic of Belarus relies heavily on natural gas imports to meet domestic energy demand. Energy efficiency (EE) investments can significantly reduce budget outlays in the long-term while also improving the physical assets and quality of energy services. Investments in thermal retrofits of public and residential buildings can result in substantial economic benefits. Recognizing the substantial energy savings potential in the buildings sector, the Government of the Republic of Belarus (GoB) has introduced policies and programs to promote the development of more energy efficient buildings, and the retrofitting of old buildings. The integrated program for design, construction, and renovation of energy-efficient housing in the Republic of Belarus for 2009-2010 and until 2020 sets a national target to reduce specific heat consumption in existing residential buildings by 60 kWh per
This report provides a baseline institutional and regulatory assessment of the oil and gas, mining (including jade and gemstones) and the hydropower sectors in Myanmar. As such the report is an input to Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in Myanmar. However, it is not exhaustive with respect to all the sectors that may be considered under a scoping study for EITI .This report is the first in-depth study of the context within which EITI will be implemented in Myanmar, and can inform broader efforts to improve natural resource governance. This includes support for developing natural resource policy, law and regulations, fiscal regime design, tax administration (including support to the Large Tax Payers Office on the extractive industries sector), license management and cadaster systems, community development agreements, strategic environmental and social mitigation and management, training needs assessments and capacity building. The follow-up to this baseline assessment is a scoping study, which will determine which companies should be included within the first MEITI report and what payment flows they will need to report on.
The lessons learned from the implications of the global crisis for the Armenian economy led the Government of Armenia to refine its approach to economic development policy. The business environment, the market structure, and the incentive pattern had not fostered reallocation of resources into more productive areas or the emergence of internationally competitive products and services. Despite numerous initiatives and multiple efforts, there was no holistic approach or actionable roadmap for supporting private sector development. The pressing need to restore economic growth despite a small domestic market led the Armenian government to search for new sources of growth in export-oriented industries. At the end of 2011, the Government of Armenia adopted its export-led industrial development strategy. The strategy set as targets improving the general business environment and sector-specific initiatives to address market failures and expand exports. The strategy builds on both a general (crosscutting) and an industry-customized toolset.
Horizontal inequalities (HIs) within a country, or inequalities among groups, have been shown to be an important source of violent conflict. Relevant group categorizations include religion, ethnicity, and region. HIs can also be measured in different ways. Ethnicity, language, religion, race, and region are examples of potentially relevant and salient group categorizations. In this paper the authors will review the prevailing HIs and their management in four West African countries - Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Mali, and Nigeria. The report provides some basic facts about these four countries, which vary greatly in area, per capita income, poverty, child mortality rates, and other features. In terms of ethnoreligious demography, it is important to note that all four countries have a highly diverse ethnic population, and three of the four (Ghana, Nigeria, and Cote d'Ivoire) have substantial Christian and Muslim populations. Each of the case study countries has had a relatively turbulent and complex political history in recent decades. The four case study countries present instructive examples of the possible (mis)management of HIs. In this paper the authors analyze the evolution and management of the prevailing HIs in each of the four cases. Section one gives introduction. Section two presents evidence on the evolution and current state of HIs in each country. Section three analyzes the main causes of the prevailing HIs, while section four focuses on the governments' attitudes, policies, and measures toward HIs. Section five discusses the links between the HIs observed and the political outcomes. Section six draws some conclusions and makes policy recommendations for improved management of HIs in multiethnic developing countries generally, and specifically in four case study countries.
This assessment of accounting and auditing practices in Latvia is part of a joint initiative of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to prepare Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes (ROSC). One of the twelve ROSC modules focuses on Accounting and Auditing (A&A), this assessment addresses the strengths and weaknesses of the accounting and auditing environment that influence the quality of corporate financial reporting and includes a review of both mandatory requirements and actual practice. This is the second A&A ROSC for Latvia. The first one was published in 2005.
This report presents an analysis of the Early Childhood Development (ECD) subsector, including programs and policies that affect young children in the Republic of Kiribati. This was a collaborative effort between UNICEF and the World Bank Group; it combines the World Bank Group's Systems Approach for Better Education Results SABER-ECD framework, which includes analysis of early learningand child p, health, nutrition, and social rotection policies and interventions in Kiribati, along with regional and international comparisons, as well as the regionally developed UNICEF National Situational Analysis ECD, which takes a greater in-depth look at the following system components, which have been highlighted by the Pacific Region as priority components for quality Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) implementation: policy, legislation, and governance; human resources; curriculum, child assessment, and environment; performance monitoring and assessment; and community partnerships. In 2008, the Ministry of Education (MOE) drafted the Kiribati Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Policy, which was formally endorsed by Cabinet in 2010. The ECCE policy, targeting ages three to five, calls ECCE a "national responsibility" with a mission "to culturally nurture young children in a loving and caring environment to enhance through interactive play the fullest potential of their physical, intellectual, social, emotional and spiritual growth in line with trends and development". This country report presents a framework to benchmark Kiribati's ECD system; each of the nine policy levers and five system components are examined in detail, and policy options to strengthen ECD are offered. This report is intended to serve as a first step for decision making within the government of Kiribati to improve the ECD system. Now that some areas in need of policy attention have been identified, the country can move forward in prioritizing policy options to promote healthy and robust development for all children during their early years.
This note presents practical guidance on how to implement a framework for managing fiscal commitments from Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs). It draws on specific regional operational experience and on World Bank Institute (WBI)'s wider thematic engagement with different partners worldwide. The note provides practical advice on how to: consistently identify and assess fiscal commitments arising from PPPs during project preparation and implementation; incorporate these into the project approval process, including budgeting for these appropriately; and strengthen the monitoring and reporting of fiscal commitments over the lifetime of the project. It explains the fiscal commitments that can arise from PPP projects; why governments may find it difficult to assess and manage these fiscal commitments and incorporate them into project selection; and the key components of an institutional framework to manage fiscal commitments at both the development and implementation stages of a project, including the roles, responsibilities, and processes for managing PPP fiscal commitments.
Bangladesh has a comprehensive Disaster Management plan, but details on the implementation and sufficiency of funding should be clarified. Strengthening financial disclosure could encourage greater engagement from key local and international stakeholders. The country also offers great opportunities to increase the outreach of insurance to larger sections of the population, especially to those most vulnerable to the substantial exposure to natural hazards and especially flood. The micro-finance market is well developed and provides opportunities to expand the still very limited availability of micro-insurance propositions to the rural population. Index-based insurance programs supported by mobile payment systems have already been piloted and there is considerable scope for this to be expanded, especially when appropriately subsidized to address affordability issues. However, this will require further strengthening of the insurance market, in respect of the implementation of the Insurance Act 2010 and of consumer representation, which is underdeveloped but may contribute strongly to improve the public's confidence and help the industry to develop successful propositions also for emerging customers.
